Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hiromi Shinya M.D. is the Chief of Surgical Endoscopy at Beth Israel Medical center and Clinical
professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is a pioneer of the Colonoscopy
and considered the leading Gastro-Enterologist in the world. He spends 6 months of the year in
Japan and 6 months in New York.
So how would this icon of the medical world start this much anticipated lecture?
Well he surprised all of us!
He started the lecture by playing his harmonica. And with that we all knew that he was no
ordinary doctor!
Two other ways I which he differs from the traditional medical doctor:
1) He does not like using pharmaceutical drugs. He suggests them only when absolutely
necessary. In fact he used to test them on himself before prescribing them for his
patients. He has since stopped this practice after taking a common medication prescribed
for erectile dysfunction and thinking he was going to die.
2) He views 90% of all disease as lifestyle related. He advocates lifestyle change,
attacking the root cause of disease, as the main focus and therapy for his clients.
Over the course of his 40 year career he has seen many changes in health in his home country of
Japan. In 1960, there were only 400 cases of breast cancer and prostate cancer reported in the
entire country. Although the Japanese are still considered the healthiest people on the planet
their health started to change drastically after the introduction of milk into school lunches.
Japanese have 10-15 times more stomach cancer than Americans, He feels strongly that this is
due to large consumption of tea and the tannic acid in it.
Americans have 10-15 times more colon cancer than the Japanese, primarily caused by diet.
If a person eats a diet high in meats, dairy products, cheese, yogurt, white rice and refined grains
it causes the colon muscular layer to become very thick, creating spasms and actually shortens
the colon. He says that a high fiber diet can actually make your colon up to 2 ft longer. He stated
that a persons colon is a good indication of what is happening to your arteries also. As the colon
goes, so do your arteries.
We do not inherit disease from our parents, we inherit their dietary habits and all the
health problems that come with it. Good habits will overcome bad genes.
Shinya believes that there is a direct relationship between dietary practices and health problems.
This is not a new idea, especially among Natural Health practitioners and enthusiasts. But is sure
refreshing to here a Medical Doctor voice the same philosophy and have 40 years of evidence to
stand on.
How has Dr Shinya arrived at his theory of health and diet? Direct physical evidence!
As a gastro-intestinal specialist he has carried out over 370,000 colonoscopic procedures. In
other words, he has inserted a camera into over a quarter million peoples colon and filmed the
results. What results? The results of their dietary practices!
For over 40 years Dr Shinya has carried out his colonoscopic procedures and gathered dietary
data from his patients. He finds out what you eat and then looks at the results. Based on this
physical evidence he has formulated his ideas on health and the diet for the future. A diet that will
prevent heart disease, cure cancer and stop type 2 diabetes. It is pretty hard to argue with this
type of evidence.
He showed a number of slides showing the interior lining of a patients colon, the toxic
accumulations, their health concerns and he shared the dietary data he got from that person.
Shinya advocates what he thinks is the best diet based on his findings. He suggests a twofold change
for all of his clients:
1) Eating a primarily vegan diet. Natural foods cure everything because the body responds to nature.